


What They Broke

by Ripuku



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Bloodshed, Gen, Horro, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-04-26
Packaged: 2017-12-09 13:01:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ripuku/pseuds/Ripuku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can break so much more than a man’s resolve through prolonged torture and imprisonment….</p>
            </blockquote>





	What They Broke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serindrana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serindrana/gifts).



He was finally free. Free of the cage they’d locked him in. Free of their grabbing hands, free of their hurt, foul words and lies, out of the reach of their threats and blackmail.

Now they would pay. Pay in blood and pain for the blood they’d spilled and the pain they’d caused him. And eye for an eye. Now wasn’t that fair? If he had his way, he’d wash the streets in the blood of those who had hurt the people he’d cared about. And oh, how it would run. Red, and hot, and his hands would be as awash in it as the streets. The Outsider had marked his hand for him, given him the ability to go after them. Should he not repay that favor?

The Loyalists had offered him help, given him refuge, but oh, they couldn’t know what they were hiding inside their pub with it’s cracked and peeling walls, rotting staircases, and filthy beds. And oh how they talked of him, calling him noble and brave and strong, and how great of will he must be to have come out of prison so unbroken. “Man of the hour.” Havelock had said.

Unbroken to the outside eye, perhaps. He found he could still stand straight and tall for them, school his face to indifference, to anger, to near arrogant righteousness. Oh, how they reveled in it with him, raised toasts, spoke of how right they were to perform such treason. But none of them saw him in the field. Saw how his eyes gleamed in the night the way a unsheathed blade gleamed in the light, saw how he delighted in the sound of knife through skin and muscle, saw how he raised bloodied fingers to his mouth as the life raced from his victims.

He tasted the blood of everyone who hurt him. Watched the fear bloom in their eyes as he approached them with nowhere for them to run, nowhere for them to hide, nothing left to bargain with. Nothing left to save them now from his wrath.

There was one man. One man whose heart he allowed to remain beating in all his wake of blood and violence. The assassin. Daud. He’d looked into that man’s eyes and seen no fear. No broken illusion of safety or dying hope that perhaps he’d be spared. Corvo had tasted this man’s blood as they fought, and decided to let him live.

It was the one time he decided that it would better for a man to live. Killing him would have been the move of mercy.

Corvo had no mercy left.

When the Loyalists betrayed him, it was the end. Now they’d see firsthand what they’d housed, what they’d fed, what they’d helped create and encourage. Martin and Pendleton had fallen to Havelock when he found them. Martin was no loss, but oh how he wished he could have watched the light in Pendleton’s eyes die. Would it have been the same as his filthy brothers had been? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

And Havelock. Took too much from him. Corvo watched the man as he approached, covered in blood both old and new, stalking down the distance between them. If Havelock thought that keeping Emily between them would save him, how he much greater is disappointment would be when Corvo got ahold of him.

Havelock’s blood tasted foul. Corvo expected no less.

He took Emily then, away from that place, his hands marking bloody her white clothing as he laid his hand upon her shoulder.

You can break so much more than a man’s will…


End file.
